In Another Life
by poeticgrace
Summary: Puck had always said that in another life, Finn would have stayed. Life is what happened when he didn't. PINN.
1. Chapter 1

Puck had always said that in another life, Finn would have stayed and they would have never had to go through this in the first place.

It started the summer after they turned eighteen, in those long, waning days where graduation gave way to reality. One week Finn was helping his lifelong best friend study for a final exam, and the next week he was saying goodbye to the love of his life at a train station. He had four years in the Army stretched out in front of him, and somewhere between drinking a twelve pack in the back of Puck's truck at the old abandoned drive-in and hugging his mother goodbye at the base, Finn knew that it was time to finally grow up.

But before he had to say leave Lima, before he gave up everything he had ever known for the United States Army, Finn had three glorious months where he could pretend that he still had all the time in the world. Just like so many summers before that one, Puck had been there for nearly every moment. They both knew that there was this internal countdown calendar that they were both ignoring, but poolside afternoons and late-night field parties made it easy to ignore what was about to happen to all of them.

It was at one of those parties that Puck dared to kiss Finn for the first time. It was late, and the crowd was starting to thin out. He watched Santana and Brittany sitting close to each other by the fire and Blaine and Kurt dancing along to some Katy Perry song as Sam strummed along on his guitar. Finn was that loose, comfortable drunk he always got, so happy and carefree that he reminded Puck so much of the six-year-old kid who had first caught his attention in kindergarten.

"We should go for a walk," Finn declared suddenly, tugging impatiently at Puck's sleeve. "Yeah, let's go for a walk, Puck! C'mon, walk with me."

"Okay, okay," Puck chuckled as he allowed Finn to help him to his feet. He sling his arm around Finn's shoulder and led him in the opposite direction from most of their friends. He let Finn take the lead from there as he so often did, and it wasn't really too much of a surprise when they ended up flat on their backs, staring up at the stars, in the bed of his truck. A lot of really good nights had ended just like this, the two of them and a million dancing stars. Puck looked at his friend out of the corner of his eye. Finn looked almost lost. "What you thinking about?"

Finn closed his eyes for a long moment and then opened them again. "The days are getting shorter. Fall is getting closer," he mused softly. They still had a month, but it wasn't long enough to do all the things and say all the words they still had left. Finn propped himself up on his elbow and gazed down at Puck. "I'm really glad that I'm spending this summer with you. Thanks for staying here."

Puck smiled into the dark. "Where else would I be?" he teased, bumping his should against Finn's forearm. The former quarterback smiled at him goofily in a way that was so Finn that Puck literally ached from how much he knew he'd soon miss it. Just as he was about to change the subject to the Indians game they were going to the next week, Puck realized that Finn was moving closer to him. "Finn?"

"Shh, just let me try something...I have to try something."

And then Finn was kissing him there in the middle of some soybean field that belonged to one of the junior Cheerios and Finn tasted like mint Chapstick mixed with cheap beer and he was running his bare foot up Puck's shin in this way that made him shiver. Finn sighed into Puck's mouth as they both relaxed into the kiss at the same time, Puck reaching for Finn's hips to draw him down against him and Finn's fingers finding some kind of resolution in the fine hairs at the nape of Puck's neck.

Puck sort of figured they'd both wake up the next morning and act like nothing happened. Instead, Finn showed up just after noon with a bag of greasy cheeseburgers and kissed him on his way through to the kitchen as if it were just something they did. Puck had always been cooler than his best friend, so if Finn could play it off, he would just have to do it too. So nothing really changed except that their wrestling sometimes turned into makeout sessions, and Puck had a new-found habit of reaching for Finn's hand across the seat when they were driving through town.

"We should go get tattoos," Finn decided one day two weeks before he was scheduled to report. He had thought about waiting until he was in the Army to get one, maybe see if some of the other guys wanted to get one as a symbol of brotherhood. But the more he thought about it, the more he knew that it was something that he should share with Puck. He had been his brother first (and okay, it was creepy thinking about him that way when he had recently become very familiar with his dick) and he just wanted to do this with Puck. "I mean, I know you're not supposed to because of the whole Jewish thing, but it'd be cool if we did it together. We could get the same thing, I'd even let you pick."

"You really sure you trust me that much?"

Although Puck had meant it as a joke, the way that Finn stared at him was so serious. "I trust you with my life, Puck, I trust you with everything."

It was that seriousness that made Puck skip the pages of cartoon characters and meaningly tribal art when they finally headed to the tattoo parlor in Lima Heights. Instead, he had chosen this intricate Celtic knot that entwined his initials with Finn's without it being super obvious. Afterward, their sore skin covered by layers of taped gauze, they found their way to the Hudson-Hummels' roof to look up at those stars. Finn had snagged a few of Burt's beers from the fridge in the garage, and Puck was pressed close with his head resting on Finn's shoulder.

"What are you going to do after the Army?"

Finn shrugged silently. "I'll probably go to college, maybe become a teacher or something," he answered. "Maybe try to acting thing, I haven't really thought that far ahead."

"But you'll come find me, right? I mean, afterward, when it's done, you're going to come back to me, right?" Puck asked uncertainly. He knew that it cost him something to ask Finn that, but he wasn't sure what. "I'll be in LA, doing the music thing, and then we'll figure out a way to be together for real."

"Sure," Finn agreed, and neither of them wanted to know if he was lying. "It's just four years, man, it's going to go so fast. Think how quickly high school flew by, you know? I'll come home and we'll be able to do this for real and it's going to be great."

"You really think it'll be that easy?"

Finn grinned as he pressed a kiss to the top of Puck's head. "Of course, dude, trust me. I'm smart about these things."

Neither of them could have known that they wouldn't see each other for five years after Finn left for basic at Fort Knox. They hadn't had a clue then how life really worked. They only had the beginnings of a love that never really had a chance to thrive and matching tattoos. Puck and Finn had never planned to lose each other, but that was exactly the way it worked out.


	2. Chapter 2

It was five years before Puck saw Finn again, and when he did reappear in his life, it was this crashing tidal wave that nearly wiped out everything in its path.

He had left Ohio when Finn had, taking the first flight west toward California without looking back. When one week turned into two and then a month, he knew that Finn was gone. There was a letter, a postcard really, just a few lines scrawled out about basic training. There was no return address, and Puck never bothered to call Carole or Kurt to find out where it could have come from. He saw a vague status update from Rachel about three months after they all left, and he wondered for a moment if Finn had gone back to her. His heart couldn't take finding out the answer.

In a best effort to forget all about Finn and the messy, beautiful, crazy wonderful summer, Finn threw himself into living up the L.A. life. He found work at a bar that filled up his nights and built up his pool clientele enough to amply supplement his income. Puck found a little rental bungalow in Malibu that should have been way beyond affordable, but the little old lady who owned it found him charming and decided to cut him a break. And so he spent all his free time learning to surf and playing his guitar on the little terrace outside her rose garden and hiking up in the canyon.

And he wasn't lonely. No, in fact, in true Puck fashion, he was far from it. He chased girl after girl, settling into a comfortable pattern where he'd hang out with them for a few months until it got too real and he'd break it off without much of an explanation. He steered clear of any guys, especially tall and lanky brunettes with crooked smiles, and focused solely on girls.

He was a little less discriminatory there. Jasmine had been a pretty Persian waitress at his usual coffee place until he got bored and started brewing it at home. Allison, a petite Irish Catholic redhead, sold sheet music at the little store he'd found his second week in the city. Carlota was a fiery Latina that accidentally rear ended him late one night when he was on his way home from work. Jessica had been a beach blonde who'd asked him for a surfing lesson, while Cameron was the gorgeous African-American model next door who was always asking him to come over to fix something around her place.

As great as all those girls had been, they had only been temporary fixes. He got bored as he tended to do and he'd disappear or be a jackass or just ignore them altogether. He never brought them back to Ohio to meet his mom, was careful never to call them his girlfriend and refused to ever utter the l-word in their direction. They couldn't keep things at his house, he never spent the night at their place and he never bothered to memorize their phone numbers. They were just girls that he'd know and then forget. There wasn't room in his heart for anything more permanent. That all still belonged to Finn.

He had been so careful about avoiding all conversations and updates about his former best friend and old flame. He unfriended most of his Lima classmates from social media and avoided places like supermarkets whenever he was back in Ohio for holidays. When his sister came out to UCLA for college, he stopped going home altogether. His mom was happy to travel to California to save them all some money, so there wasn't really any reason to go back to his hometown. If his mother knew anything about Finn, she never let on. The only person he talked to other than his family from home was Chang, and the Asian never said anything about the old quarterback after Puck told him he didn't want to hear about Finn ever again that first year.

And it worked out pretty well until he came down with the flu. Hunkered down in his queen-sized bed with a cache of tissues and cold medication, he alternated between sleeping, flipping through the stack of magazines he'd been mostly ignoring for the past six months and scanning idly through crappy daytime TV. He was just about to look through yet another issue of Sports Illustrated when he stopped the remote on one of those entertainment tabloid shows. He should have been surprised to see Rachel Berry's familiar face beaming back at him but he wasn't. Everyone had always known that she had been destined for greatness, so it only made sense that she was opening some Broadway revival in New York soon. She looked beautiful as the surgically enhanced reporter interviewed her.

"And what about your personal life, Miss Berry?" the aging blonde asked. Rachel smiled uncomfortably in return, shifting a little in her seat. "Your recent breakup has been noted in the _New York Post_. Is there anyone special in your life?"

Rachel took a small breath and smiled again. Puck recognized it as her stage face, the guise she wore when she was in professional mode back in high school. "Yes, it's true that Finn and I have parted ways after several years, but we remain close. He supports me in everything that I do, and I am so fortunate that we have been able to stay best friends."

The reporter wrapped up the interview, and Puck flipped off the television. Finn and Rachel had broken up? Part of his felt like this shouldn't change anything, but an even bigger part of him knew that it potentially changed everything. His head was a mess of chaos between the unsettling revelation and the powerful meds. Rather than act impulsively, he told himself that he was going to sleep on it. He wanted to be back at fighting weight, of clear mind and heart, before he made any kind of decision about what came next.

Puck fell into a deep slumber soon after. He dreamt so vividly about Finn then that he could almost feel him there with him. He could hear his voice, swore that it still sounded the same, just like his kiss still tasted just as it had five years ago. He felt lonelier than ever when he woke up, reaching across the bed for a ghost that hadn't been there in far too long. Puck knew that he had a lot of choices he could make right now, but it really felt like there was only one viable option. Five years was long enough to try to forget, but Finn wasn't leaving his heart. Seeing Rachel, hearing about the breakup, it had to be a sign. Maybe Finn hadn't forgotten either; maybe he still loved him.

He reached for his cell phone and dialed the only person he knew would certainly be able to track down Finn for him. It only rang twice before he heard his old friend's voice. "Chang, man, you have to get me Finn's number."

"Puck, hey," Mike replied nervously. "Are you sure? You told me never to give it to you. I mean, you made me promise, even if you begged."

Puck chuckled as he remembered the few drunken calls Mike had endured over the years. "I'm sure," he said quietly. "I'm finally sure."

Thirteen seconds later, Puck hung up the phone and looked down at the ten digits he'd written on the back of a takeout menu from the Korean place a few blocks away. Never had such simple numbers meant so much to him. He was scared now that he actually had them in his hands. His fingers shook almost violently as he dialed them on his phone. And then there was this ringing in his ear and then he heard it, the one thing he had been waiting five years to hear:

_Hello._


	3. Chapter 3

"Hello?"

Puck listened as Finn repeated the word for the third time. He took a deep breath, mentally kicking himself for being such a pussy about a stupid phone call. "Hey, man."

Finn gasped audibly in Puck's ear. "Noah?"

He hadn't heard anyone, not even his own mother, call him that name since that lost summer. There was something about hearing it now that made Puck burst into tears immediately. He had gone from being Noah to Puck to Finn somewhere around the time his dad left in second grade, and only that summer, when all his defenses were down, did Noah make a reappearance. Hearing Finn say it though, it blew him away. He wasn't expecting that.

"Hey, dude, it's okay," Finn said soothingly. He was just as caught off guard by the phone call as he was by Puck's tears. "Please, Noah, it's all good. Talk to me, hey, okay? Just talk to me."

It was this rambling mess, but it made perfect sense to Puck. "I can't believe it's you," Puck said finally. This wasn't going at all like he had planned. "I saw you on TV the other day, looked real good with Berry. You're living in New York?"

"Yeah, New York," Finn replied. "And Rach and me, that's over. I suppose you know that though, huh? I don't get why those shows care about my life, but I guess that's not really about me anyways. Just weird, ya know?"

His mind is reeling at Finn's verbal vomit, but he doesn't care. He just wants to hear him talk nonsense forever because it's the most anything has made sense to him in years. It's stupid and sappy and so unlike Puck but it's most genuine thing he's ever admitted to himself. And then:

"So why are you calling?"

Puck chuckled over the line. "Seeing you made me miss you. No, that's not true. It just reminded me that I don't want to go on missing you forever," he promptly corrected himself. "So I got your number from Chang and thought I'd give you a quick shout. Catch up and whatnot, see what you've been up to. Dude, it's been five years."

"I know, bro, right?" Finn laughed. "Mike said you're still doing the music thing in LA."

"You've kept tabs on me?"

Finn was quiet for a moment. "I just needed to know that you were okay," he admitted softly. "Mike said you don't really talk to anyone else. They ask about you pretty often, the old gang. We were all so close and now, it's a scattered mess. I can't believe I don't know you anymore."

"You still know me," Puck blurts out before he can stop himself. They both ignore it. "Yeah, those were some good times though, high school and glee. It taught me a lot about discipline when it comes to music. Can you believe I still do those stupid warm up exercises that Berry used to bitch about? And I have that tie from Nationals senior year in my guitar case. Reminds me where I come from."

He also had a photograph of him and Finn from that summer tucked in his songwriting book, but he doesn't mention that.

"Wow, Nationals," Finn mused. "That was a really good day."

"Yeah, man, one of the best," Puck agreed. "But when I think about that time, that's not the time I remember most with you guys. I think about Nationals in New York, staying up all night to write that song with you…_Will we ever say the words we're feeling? Reach down underneath and tear down all the walls…"_

"_Will we ever have a happy ending? Or will we forever only be pretending?_" Finn finished for him. "That was a good song."

"Good fucking song," Puck countered. "It was your guys' song."

"It was our song," Finn disagreed. "Yours and mine, we did that together. No matter who I sang it to up on that stage, it was all you and me in those lyrics. I knew that even then, and time hasn't changed that. You were my best friend, bro, what changed? Why did we lose that? How could we?"

They both knew exactly how they had lost it. It was the same reason they still missed it. Love.

"I miss you, Finn," Puck admitted. He felt like it cost him something to admit that so easily, but he was tired of keeping score. He just wanted – _needed_ – Finn back in his life. "I miss everything about having you be in my life. You were my partner in crime, dude. We did everything together, promised that wed never lose track of each other. On the days when it gets too hard, I listen to the songs we used to play together in your basement and try to get a piece of that back."

"Oh, Noah," Finn whispered gently. "It's not too late. You could come here. I could come there. Whatever you need to do, man, we can figure this out."

"Can you just get away like that?"

"For you, yeah, of course," Finn answered automatically. "What about you?"

Puck had a litany of upcoming obligations, but none of them were as important as this trip. "I can be in New York tomorrow," he decided thoughtfully. It has been so scary for the better part of five years, and now there was a sense of urgency he never would have expected. "Like, am I going to have to worry about cameras or anything?"

Finn laughed. "Rachel's the famous one, not me."

"I don't know, dude, a lot of people seem to know your name."

"About as many as know your name," Finn pointed out. "Just come, dude. It'll be fine."

Puck laughed at Finn's carefree optimism. Some things never change. "Okay, I'll shift around my schedule a little. I might have to do some work stuff while I'm there, but it shouldn't be a big deal. Maybe you could even come down to the studio to see me play. I have some guys I work with there."

"Yeah, yeah, that'd be awesome!" Finn gushed. He had missed hearing Puck sing so much that he had bought all of his tracks on iTunes. And dug out the old DVDs from high school. And maybe even the cassettes they had recorded together in middle school. "Text me with your flight info, I'll meet you. You can stay with me at the loft. Rach got a new place."

"Sounds good, I'll talk to you then."

"Promise?"

Puck's stomach flipped. "Yeah, Finn, I promise."


End file.
